Taxonomy term

Taxonomy term

Reflection is a slippery beast. It happens in the most inconvenient places and at the most inconvenient times. Washing up, walking the dog, waiting for a bus. Times and places when I can let thoughts and ideas run through my mind, but there's...

This is one of my favourite ways in to using poetry in the classroom. I’ve found it works with all kinds of classes, from A2 up, with teenagers or adults. Here is a ten step lesson plan for a whole lesson including eating, reading, writing and...

This basically entails teaching four hours of a new language to the trainees in the initial stage of their course to give them a taste of what it feels like to be in a language classroom. I teach Welsh. I don’t use any published materials for the...

For a few years now I've been experimenting with sharing lesson summaries with my classes and here I'd like to share a summary from a typical first class. This was an intermediate class of adult students at a private language school in Cádiz. I've...

Sometimes lessons take a direction we didn't expect. In this post I'm going to describe a short, off-the-cuff writing exercise that I did some time ago with a group of teenager students.I had been running a workshop with some teachers at a local...

It’s mid-term exam and reports time at the school I’m working with in Cádiz at the moment. The school has a no-coursebook, negotiated-syllabus policy for their adult classes and teachers write exams for their individual classes. Collaboration is...

I first used this activity with a class of teenagers in Italy. The mixture of putting the teacher on the spot, silliness and hard work appealed to them. It has since become my number one favourite minimal preparation lesson for almost all ages...